Temperance Tantrum

How the Anti-Saloon League's political cunning led to Prohibition—and a colorful, sordid era

By

Russ Smith

Updated May 14, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

It's a safe conjecture that the snapshot impression most Americans have of the Prohibition era is a gauzy haze of speakeasies, Al Capone, bootleggers, flappers, bathtub gin and Harlem's Cotton Club. For decades, the Hollywood and literary glorification of those who flouted the 18th Amendment—which went into effect on Jan. 17, 1920—has promoted the entirely accurate notion that the Prohibition story is at times outrageously picaresque. But the pop-culture view has also fostered the inaccurate belief that alcohol back then was a rare commodity, available only to the privileged, the daring and the outright...